Did you know that 100 percent of Circuit City’s annual profits come from the sale of extended warranties? How about Best Buy? Forty percent comes from extended warranties. That’s why salespeople are all over you like a cheap suit when you go to Circuit City or Best Buy. Clark just read a Consumer Reports article on extended warranties that confirmed how useless they are. The only product CR says is worth it is a high end treadmill. The smartest thing you can do is to buy an item on a credit card because some of them automatically double a manufacturer’s warranty. That’s like getting a free warranty. Business Week got more in detail with extended warranties. The magazine found that if you were to buy a $1,000 RCA digital TV, Circuit City charges $100 for the warranty. Best Buy charges $62. But WalMart charges just $29 for the same warranty. So, it’s a huge mark-up. Salespeople receive a huge amount of pressure to sell these things, and you pretty much never should buy one. Appliances, electronics and computers rapidly decrease in value as soon as you take them out of the box. Why would you want to insure that? Plus, the average cost of a warranty is as much as a repair. So stay away from extended warranties at all costs.